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Roku Stock Climbs After Possible Smart Speaker Acquisition

Shares of Roku ROKU climbed more than 13% on Friday after news of the company’s acquisition of Dynastrom, a Danish firm focused multi-room audio software, spread throughout the market.

Investors seem to be reacting favorably to the Dynastrom buyout, likely because it signals Roku’s intention to enter the budding smart speaker market. With in-home assistants from Amazon AMZN and Alphabet GOOGL flying off the shelves, Roku could find another key revenue driver in this business.

“We are always looking to expand our engineering team, and the addition of Dynastrom allows us to scale the team further,” said a Roku spokesperson in a statement. “They will continue operations in Denmark as a subsidiary of Roku Inc. We are not disclosing any additional details related to the transaction.”

Roku did not mention how much it spent for the Danish firm, but the company did reveal an unspecified $3.5 million acquisition in a regulatory filing Thursday. Variety has also reported that Dynastrom employees have been listed as Roku employees on LinkedIn since September.

Dynastrom develops Sonos-like sound functions over WiFi. Its platform allows users to hear the same audio throughout a multi-room sound system. While no official word about Roku’s plans for Dynastrom have emerged yet, it seems logical that the company would be interested in expanding its hardware offerings.

But even if Roku does not intend to build a smart speaker system, the company should be able to benefit from Dynastrom’s technology. For instance, the Roku streaming devices could pair with Dynastrom’s platform to enable users to hear their TV shows in multiple rooms. All of a sudden running to the kitchen for a snack in the middle of a show doesn’t seem too bad.

Today’s gains come in the wake of Roku’s first earnings report as a publicly-traded company. On Wednesday, the company posted a non-GAAP, pro forma loss of 10 cents per share, which was an improvement from the 17 cent loss posted in the prior-year quarter.

Roku also saw revenue figures of $124.782 million, which was up about 40% from the $89.053 witnessed in the year-ago period. Roku said that $67.254 million of this revenue was from sales of its players, while $57.528 came from its streaming platform.

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